Text Adriano Sack
Out of pure vanity I should only wear Eau D’Hadrian (Annick Goutal) but I’m kind of a flip-flopper when it comes to fragrances. My attention span is normally too short to finish one bottle before hopping to the next. And I don’t really believe in switching on a daily or weekly basis. It’s like putting on your second favorite pair of shoes to save the nicer ones for another day (or life?).
I’ll spare you the faux-expert lingo about the ingredients, the head-notes etc. There’s other people much more dedicated to the subtle details of perfumes, I’m more of an accidental fan.
Karl Lagerfeld: I was 17 years old and very impressed by the decoration in the local Douglas outlet in my hometown Hanover: a black-and-white drawing that looked vaguely Biedermeier and showed the silhouette of a man in a suit, with ponytail and a fan. I had just read a story in Manager Magazine about Karl Lagerfeld’s three apartments and their distinct design concepts (Paris: Louis something, New York: modern, Monaco: Memphis) and I was convinced that this guys was modern age’s Oscar Wilde. I asked the Douglas people if I could have the almost lifesize cardboard prop when they would de-install it to put it in my first aparment. The musky, powdery scent Karl Lagerfeld became my first and religiously beloved perfume. Funny enough I didn’t even know I was gay in these days.
Versace: That was way before I learned about his outrageous lifestyle, the Roman villas, the manhunt.com-style campaigns. In my fashion ignorance I just happened to like the laurel leaves on the sides of the bottle and the intense odor.
Eau Sauvage by Christian Dior: The pasta al limone among my scents: Always works, even if it’s not terribly exciting. Since I have a sweet spot for completely artificial, poisonous odors (gasoline, glue, wet paper towels) I love the „freshness“ of Eau Sauvage.
YSL pour homme:
Something I would buy in a duty free out of lack of more interesting alternatives. Surprisingly unflamobyant for an YSL scent. I alway want to buy YSL rive gauche because it is the best contemporary fragrance bottle (the best of all times being Chanel No. 5). But I just can’t stand the smell of rive gauche.
Acier Aluminum by Creed: A masculine scent, a great bottle, a cute, but not too capricous „boutique brand“. Actually I do believe it smells like coins, which is weird and intrigueing. I used it in my „rich phase“ in the 90ties when I had some money to spend, a generous boyfriend and the idea that things would go radically over the top forever.
Sables by Annick Goutal: Dark, sensual, sweet. Almost unwearable for a guy but I got introduced to it by a guy who didn’t care what other people think. I still love it (and him) dearly.
Egoiste by Chanel: The TV commercial was pure genious (I think Mondino directed it). A French chateau, in each window a gorgeous girl silmultaneously opening the blinds an yelling „Egoiste“. As if one hot guy had slept with each one of them during one night only to disappear the next morning. The first time I wore it, my cab driver asked why I smelled of Pflaumenkuchen. I never used it again.
Knize Sec: The sweet smell of the catholic church. Too bad it’s out of production.
Yatagan by Caron: My all time favourite and my personal contribution fort he reconciliation of the Western world and the middle-East. Yatagan embodies a 70ties take on orientalism, a case-study of cultural misunderstandings but in the hottest possible way. It makes me want to fuck myself.
Gentiane Blanche by Hermès: It took me a year to buy it, then I lost it at a reading of Moritz von Uslar’s new book Deutschboden at Grill Royal after everybody had made fun of my orange label bag. Sometimes a fragrance, not matter how good it is, is not meant to be yours.
Adriano Sack ist Autor und Journalist, ausserdem Editor in Chief von I like my style quarterly.
Bild 1: Adriano Sack (Caption for image: Sounds a little corny but the woody, herb-y smell of a mountain forest is hard to beat. This picture was taken by my boyfriend during a hike in the Cascades in Washington.)
Jacket: Jens Kaeumle
Pants: Comme des Garcons
Boots: Meindl
Scarf: some random stuff
Cap: Orca’s Island
Bild 12: von Adriano's Facebook-Profil geklaut
